The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova (22 page)

During such periods of peace between the Ottoman Empire and Venice in the latter half of the fifteenth century relations between the two powers extended much further than trade. After the signing of the peace treaty in 1479, Sultan Mehmet II went so far as to send a high-ranking Turkish delegation to Venice with the intention of negotiating a wide-ranging cultural exchange. Despite the Islamic ban on painted images, Mehmet had developed a deep interest in European art, dating back to his early encounter with Byzantine icons and the mosaics of Hagia Sophia after the fall of
Constantinople. In the past, Mehmet had been introduced to Florentine examples of Renaissance art, which had so entranced him that he determined to import Italian artists to his court. As a consequence, the high-ranking delegation to Venice in 1479 specifically asked for the services of
‘un bon pytor’
(‘a good painter’). Whereupon the Great Council voted to send to the sultan the painter Gentile Bellini, who was ordered to fulfil the role of both painter and cultural ambassador. Bellini was not only regarded as the finest painter in Venice at this time, but had also long cultivated a deep interest in all things Eastern. A quarter of a century previously, when in his twenties, he had followed the work of the Byzantine artists who had taken up residence in the city after the fall of Constantinople.
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On arrival at the sultan’s, court in the newly built palace of Topkapi, overlooking the Bosphorus, Bellini appears to have established an immediate rapport with Mehmet II. The Venetian artist and the sultan seem to have recognised each other as kindred souls, at least with regard to their interest in foreign cultures. Bellini’s interest in the East had almost certainly led him to learn Greek, and his friends amongst the Byzantine scholars may even have passed on to him a smattering of Turkish and Arabic. Mehmet II, for his part, is known to have mastered eight languages before the age of twenty-one; these included Persian, Hebrew, Arabic and even French. Bellini eagerly immersed himself in his exotic new surroundings and was soon producing a succession of meticulously observed drawings of the figures he encountered – including soldiers from the sultan’s personal guard of Janissaries, men in kaftans and cloaks, court officials with their heads swathed in enormous turbans (the size of turban was an indication of rank), and even depicting exotically clad, but unveiled local women (though many experts are of the opinion that these must have been indigenous Greeks). His other works are said to have included a meticulous map of
Constantinople, as well as a panorama of Venice drawn from memory for Mehmet II himself. Other demands by the sultan included a series of erotic drawings, as well as Christian scenes from the Bible. One of these was said to have depicted the beheaded St John the Baptist, though when Mehmet saw it he objected that St John’s executed head was in fact faulty, as the severed neck simply did not expose the innards the way Bellini had painted it. Mehmet then demonstrated this to Bellini by beckoning for a slave and having him summarily beheaded before them.

This incident doubtless focused Bellini’s concentration when he came to paint Mehmet II’s portrait, which he is said to have done several times, though only one of these has survived and today hangs in the National Gallery in London. According to its inscription, it was completed on 25 November 1480,
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and shows the fearsome ‘Mehmet the Conqueror’ to have possessed a surprisingly mild-mannered appearance, though the fixed distant gaze of his eyes gives an indication of his determination.

According to the contemporary Italian historian Giovanni Angiolello, who was attached to the sultan’s court, Bellini’s relationship with Mehmet II was ‘unique in its intimacy’; no Islamic ruler of the period had such a close friendship with anyone working in his employ. Indeed, during the late years of Mehmet’s reign a law was passed which expressly decreed that any intimacy between the sultan and his subjects was to be regarded as derogatory to the majesty of their ruler, and was to be punished as such. As a result of their closeness, Mehmet offered to grant Bellini any wish he desired. Possibly on account of his fear of the sultan, after his arbitrary slaughter of the slave, Bellini asked to be allowed to return to his native Venice. Mehmet II graciously consented to this wish, and before Bellini departed he was elevated to the nobility and presented with a solid gold chain inscribed with the sultan’s name, his honorific and all his titles (according to Giorgio Vasari, writing just over half a century later, this chain ‘weighed the equivalent of 250 golden ducats’). Mehmet also gave Bellini an effusive letter of recommendation, bestowing upon him further honours, including that of ‘golden knight’ and ‘palace companion, going
on to praise his ‘miraculous’ artistic abilities and referring to him as ‘one of the most select and intimate members of the household’ – praise indeed from a man who had eight wives and maintained an extensive harem.

This letter was dated 15 January 1481, and it appears that Bellini departed for Venice soon after this. Just a few months later, in early May, Mehmet II, in his late fifties and suffering from gout, succumbed to his ailment. Despite all that Mehmet the Conqueror had achieved for the Ottoman Empire – his expansion in the Balkans, Anatolia and the Crimea, as well as his administrative reforms – many amongst the religious faction were outraged by his close relationship with Western Christians such as Bellini, his glorification of his hero Alexander the Great, and his cavalier attitude towards such Islamic strictures as the ban on images.

Mehmet was succeeded by his son, Bejazit II, who immediately reined in Mehmet II’s expansionist military policy and instituted a more strict observance of Islamic law. Bejazit ordered many of his father’s imagistic treasures, including his portrait by Bellini, to be removed from the Topkapi Palace and sold off in the bazaar. Resident Venetian merchants were quick to snap up these bargains, whereupon they were shipped back to Europe – which accounts for Bellini’s portrait of one of the greatest Ottoman sultans being now on display in London rather than Istanbul.

Meanwhile the Ottomans continued to advance. In the very year that Mehmet signed the peace treaty with Venice, the Ottoman army simply occupied all the major Ionian islands except Corfu. This left the Turks in virtual control of the entrance to the Adriatic. Yet the true purpose behind this move remained unforeseen. Early in 1480 Turkish troops landed unopposed in the heel of Italy, laying waste to the countryside of Apulia and seizing the city of Otranto in the kingdom of Naples. Amidst scenes of mayhem the citizens of Otranto were either slaughtered or shipped back across the Adriatic into slavery. Spectacular acts of savagery included the building of a pyramid of skulls in the main square, and a public spectacle in which the Bishop of Otranto and the local commander were sawn in half.

During the quarter-century since the Peace of Lodi, Venice had remained for the most part unpopular throughout Italy, with its fellow states jealous of its power and perceived riches. Besides occupying the largest territory in northern Italy, it also had a trading empire in the eastern Mediterranean,
commercial links across the Alps, galley trading routes to the North Sea, and its explorer Alvise Cadamosto had recently discovered the Cape Verde Islands and sailed as far round West Africa as the River Gambia. Even in the face of a Turkish invasion of the Italian mainland, initially it was only hatred of Venice that united the states of Italy. The ludicrous extent of this anti-Venetian sentiment can be seen from the response of King Ferrante I of Naples to the invasion of Otranto, which was in fact part of his territory. Upon hearing of the invasion, he immediately claimed that this was an aggressive act against Naples by Venice, whose recent peace talks with the Turks had in reality been nothing more than an act of treachery against his kingdom.

The Ottoman occupation of Otranto was nothing less than a beachhead for a more serious march on Rome, where the sultan intended to declare himself emperor, and then set about reconquering the entire European region that had once constituted the western half of the Roman Empire. Pope Sixtus IV himself surmised this, but he was hardly in a position to inspire Italy to attempt another holy-league crusade. Since his accession to the papal throne nine years previously he had ceaselessly intrigued with various Italian states in the furtherance of nepotistic ambitions for his nephews. Just two years previously there had been a plot to assassinate Lorenzo de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence; in the aftermath of the plot’s failure, Sixtus IV’s leading role in the affair had become evident to all. Few Italian rulers now trusted him, and he knew that democratic Venice would certainly not break the peace treaty that it had signed with the Ottomans just a year before. With good reason, Sixtus IV knew himself to be perilously exposed if Mehmet II decided on a rapid march to Rome, and even made arrangements for the papal court to withdraw from the city.

Fortunately, Sixtus was spared by the death of Mehmet, and by his successor Sultan Bejazit Il’s decision against continuing a policy of rapid and reckless expansion, preferring instead a period of consolidation and coexistence (especially with Venice). The majority of the Turkish garrison was withdrawn from Otranto, and the Neapolitan army soon retook the city. For the time being, it appeared that the Italian mainland was safe.

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At this time a ‘lance’ in fact consisted of three or more men: the mam
cavallo
on his charger, along with his mounted attendant and his page or servant, who rode behind on a packhorse or donkey carrying their equipment.

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The city was now officially known by the Turks as Kostantimyye, but was still for the most part widely called Constantinople (in Greek
Constantinopolis
). Its present name of Istanbul derives from the Greek
eis stin poli
(meaning ‘to the city’), which was used well before the fall of Constantinople, and was in fact a current Greek term for an urban centre throughout the Aegean region, onginatmg as a reply to the greeting ‘Where are you going?’ The name Istanbul gradually grew in popular usage during the centuries of Ottoman rule, but was not officially designated as the name of the city until after the founding of the present Turkish Republic in 1923.

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Sic; this must have been dated by the artist, rather than his prestigious sultan, who would have used the Islamic calendar.

8

The Venetian Queen of Cyprus

D
ESPITE
O
TTOMAN ENCROACHMENT
eastwards along the Anatolian coast towards Cilicia and Syria, the key to commerce between Europe and the eastern Mediterranean remained Cyprus. This strategically located island provided protection for shipping seeking access to the lucrative trade routes in spices and luxury goods that extended from China and India to Damascus, Beirut, up the Red Sea and across the Suez isthmus, and to Alexandria. Venice had long retained trading bases in the major ports of Cyprus, and several noble Venetian families even owned large estates on the island, though there still remained a rivalry with the Genoese, who also owned sizeable estates. Cyprus was ruled by the Frankish Lusignan dynasty, whose ancestor Guy de Lusignan had been sold the island by Richard I of England in 1192 and immediately declared himself king. Since then several powers, including the Genoese, the Venetians and the Mamelukes (rulers of Syria and Egypt), had sought at various times to assert a controlling influence over the island, but with little lasting success – though Cyprus did in fact remain a tributary state of the Mamelukes. Over the centuries the Lusignan kings of Cyprus had also briefly become king of Jerusalem and then, even more briefly, ruler of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, which occupied the north-eastern shore of the Mediterranean opposite Cyprus. As a result, the Lusignan kings of Cyprus continued to refer to themselves as the ‘King of Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia’ – despite the redundancy of the last two titles.

By the latter half of the fifteenth century the King of Cyprus (and of Jerusalem and Armenia) was the young James II, an illegitimate member of the Lusignan line who in 1460 had ousted the rightful heir, his sister
Charlotte. Together with her husband, Louis of Savoy, she had fled to take refuge in the Genoese-held castle of Kyrenia, on the north coast, which was then subjected to a siege by James. However, after three years Charlotte and Louis had managed to escape, finally reaching Rome, where they had begun trying to recruit allies willing to invade the island and reinstate them on the throne. James II, or James the Bastard as he became widely known (both on factual and pejorative grounds), was in his early twenties and was hardly a popular monarch, on account of his wilfulness of character and his philandering amongst the wives and daughters of the island’s rich landowners. Yet this behaviour was grudgingly tolerated, largely because the landowners knew that without the Lusignan monarchy the island was liable to fall into the hands of an international power, which would quickly dispossess them of their large estates.

James II, for his part, was also well aware of the vulnerability of Cyprus to foreign invasion and decided to turn to Venice for support. The Republic had welcomed this opportunity to gain influence over the island, which they had long sought to absorb into their empire. An alliance was quickly agreed and reinforced by persuading the twenty-eight-year-old James to accept as his queen the fourteen-year-old Caterina, daughter of the noble Venetian Marco Cornaro.
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The Cornaro family had long had close associations with Cyprus – Caterina’s uncle, Andrea Cornaro, being one of the island’s largest landowners, with extensive sugar-cane estates. At the same time, Caterina’s mother was of Greek descent, being the granddaughter of Emperor John Comnenos of Trebizond. Thus, as the Venetians were at pains to point out, Caterina was technically speaking of imperial blood, rather than merely royal blood.